


Ashes of Eden

by Marchwriter



Series: Invictus [1]
Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Adultery, Canon Universe, Drabbles, Drama, F/M, Laws and Customs Among the Eldar was written by a Man, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:09:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 8,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marchwriter/pseuds/Marchwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of snapshots exploring the tempestuous relationship between Haldir, marchwarden of Lórien, and Celebrían, the Lady of Imladris, that withstood the passing of Ages, the advent and aftermath of war, and the inevitability of parting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: First Sights, Silver Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: Originally inspired by the Back to Middle-earth 2011 prompts, these drabbles took on a web and weft of their own in the telling as these things tend to do.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm merely wandering through Middle-earth, bereft of map and compass, and loving every minute.
> 
> Rating: The drabbles themselves wander the length and breadth of the rating system, but the highest will be M for adult themes.

Lindon, S.A.

She is spoiled as a black nut under autumn's loam. Her gentle manners and the elegant incline of her head as she greets Gil-galad's courtiers do nothing to conceal the way she sights down her nose at them, her fingers twisting the silk of her gown with sheer pique. She all but shudders when they take her hand to press to their lips, and the smile she gives is vacant. These are lords all, and she suffers them as if they were something to be borne only.

This little queen with sweet, mincing deer-steps crosses the hall without escort or companion as if she were king. I turn briskly about face since my officer would have my hide if he knew my eyes were directed otherwhere than down the long, dull corridor I am assigned to watch. For what purpose, I cannot fathom. No peril threatens Lindon, save the imminent flood of royal visitors that need to be housed, fed, clothed, feted: every want, need or passing desire seen to before Gil-galad's jubilee on the morrow. The local availability of meat, wine, and any other fine commodity will plunge in the space of a fortnight with all those who have arrived today alone.

My eyes slide back towards the antechamber only to startle when I realize the golden-haired wench is not a few paces from me and watching me in return.

"Good even, soldier." Her voice is clear and musical as all elf-maid's tend to be, but there is an earthier note too like the fall of leaves into rushing water. Her head has come down, and her large eyes look up at me though she is near my height.

I stare. Foolishly. I know not what to say to this fey creature, disdainful one moment and courteous the next. And to me, of all, who is little more than a doorpost with eyes to most of Gil-galad's royal visitors. Remembering myself and my place, I incline my head in the fashion my father has taught me.

"Good even…" I stammer, realizing I know not her title. The end of my words hangs like the pulse in my throat, suspended and awkward.

She smiles, and I want her to go away. She is too strange. Divine intervention spares me further speech as someone calls what I assume is her name, and we both jerk as if caught at some impropriety. I wrench myself from the confusion of her eyes and match my back and shoulders to my doorpost again.

In the emptiness of the corridor, with my stretch of duty unending until after the supper-bell rings, I mouth the name.

Celebrían. It suits her.


	2. Wading

Celebrían caught up her skirts with such energy Haldir glimpsed a flash of white shift as well as a generous length of glistening leg as she scrabbled up the bank and threw herself down beside him.

"Will you not join me? The water is pleasant." Her cheeks were flushed, but the cool air had raised gooseflesh along her calves. A thin line of silt streaked up to her knee, hard ankles dotted with grass blades. He found himself fascinated by the sharp sunlight on her skin, broken and refracted a million times over by the water droplets.

"I think not. I have no desire to swim this morn." He sat up and took the damp twist of her hem between his fingers. "This is thoroughly ruined, you know that?"

She gave him a wicked smile. "There are worse things than a ruined hem."

"Oh? Such as?"

One by one his fingers plucked off the grass blades' ill-contrived and unsubtle embraces. She watched him, her head canted just a little to one side, eyes half-closed, for all the world like one of the little finches that settled on the High King's fountain and trembled with their own heartbeats. For even in stillness, she quivered with impatience. Perhaps, with expectation, anticipation…if her trembling mirrored his own.

He could almost feel it beneath his fingers, that pulse, and he slowed, his thumbs brushing aside the grittiness of silt. To move too suddenly now would spook her. Though his experience with women to this point was albeit limited, he knew enough from a few experimental fumblings in the more secretive corners of the pantry and the tales bandied back and forth among his brethren in the guard that it was better to be gentle, to approach a woman as cautiously as one would a wild bird. Toss the noose light and easy; let her catch herself in the snare.

He hardly dared breathe as his index finger fit into the hollow beneath her knee, his calluses clammy and abrasive against the softness of her damp skin. The slightest pressure. He was so close, he could see the brush strokes of her eyelashes as they flickered, nervous as ruffled wings.

"If you don't know, I shan't tell you," she whispered, her breath warm and rapid against his cheek.

Then suddenly his hands were empty of her as she darted from his grasp, her laughter a glorious and exasperating song as she dove back towards the stream.

He let out the breath he'd been holding in a long, frustrated exhale and slumped back on the grass. Digging his fingers into his eyes did not disperse the image of her wet skin within the palm of his hand nor did it endow him with a greater penchant for patience. Resigned, he lay back to watch and wait for his little bird to flutter near again.


	3. Equals

He is the shadow in the corner. Though the others ignore his presence, I am drawn to it again and again.

What is he, an untitled Silvan, that he should claim her affections? I am the son of the Mariner, who bears the Silmaril on his brow. I am the Voice of the High King. I wielded a sword centuries before he cast aside poppets and playthings for the blade he now carries.

His eyes, glazed from long standing, flicker suddenly towards the door. Celebrían enters, achingly resplendent in green and white silk, on her father's arm. In the wake of her passing, our eyes meet. He inclines his head. The gesture, as if to concede my point, extinguishes my spite.

Wryly, I return his acknowledgment.

In our suffering, at least, we are equals.


	4. Summer

Talk of wolves lurking in the hills made her scoff, but she endured his company nonetheless, more, he suspected, for the fact that she might get lost without him than anything.

On these outings, she did not dress at all like a woman of her station. A man's trousers, a pair of her father's likely, served where a habit would not. Over it, she wore a loose, linen shirt, damp now at the back, and belted with a length of rope like a waif. But her boots were good and costly calfskin, meant more for riding a palfrey along manicured trails than clambering over rocks and streams.

Before the morning had worn into afternoon, they reached the "garden," a well-known but difficult-to-reach spot with a scattering of trees and a view well down the hill to the farmsteads and guarded walls of Ost-in-Edhil. They sat in the shade and filched cherries off the branches, spitting the pits in the grass, knees brushing. Their conversation rose and fell, wandering as the wind amid the grasses.

And in-between the silences, he mustered his courage.

She lay on her back, her fine boots beside her, her hair loosening in its tail and clinging to her neck. It looked very bright against the grass. It had been a water-starved summer.

By increments, by accident, his hand, independent of the rest of him, began to move. It was a longer journey than their climb, for every pause in her idle speech made him freeze as if snared in the hawk's gaze. He was sweating under his homespun tunic, unforgivably aware of the utter disparity in their stations, ages, temperaments, lives. His hand stilled its slow creep.

Still talking of something he could no longer follow, she reached over, perfect with fearlessness, and wove her fingers with his.


	5. From the East

Gondor’s plains rolled on and on, the grass bending against a cypress-and-salt scented wind.

From the East, the wains were coming up from the crossroads, bearing the fruit of the battlefields.

They were all flesh under her hands. Piles of flesh. Elf no different from Man no different from Dwarf. Flesh that she plucked apart, sewed up, cauterized, cleaned and bound. She had pulled so many arrow and spear heads that she felt a miner, delving in the dark in search of gems and gold.

She sought nothing in these days except brief snatches where she might pillow her head in the grass, half-under the cots and sleep.

All of them cried out for their mothers or called her by names she did not recognize in their delirium. They asked to marry her when she fed them bits of bread softened in greasy broth. If they were not the marrying kind, they asked for her kiss. She kissed them just to feel the shape of different letters on her lips.

Every hour when the runners came, when the stink of the marshes drew close, when the wains creaked heavily up the road, she searched for familiar faces. Not long. A glance, a quick sweep as any captain would scan a field where his men lay hidden in ambush. She had not yet seen beloved faces amongst her own grim ranks. She wouldn’t ask. Too many who worked her beside her had men out beyond the marshes. Or in them.

She swiped her sweat-stinging eyes, felt the damp film her forearm left behind. She wore her sleeves red to the elbows. The boy who had come to her still moving and able to cry now lay with all the color gone from his face, the crying blessedly stilled. In the half-dark, she could not say if he was Elf or Man. She was sure he was no Dwarf. He lacked a beard.

The ends of herself were starting to unravel. She had to tuck them in, pull out from under the heavy canvas where she had labored for unknown hours, where the sun had beaten all morning and all afternoon and where the lamps would burn all night.

Acrid fluid filled her mouth, and she stepped out into the cool of twilight. She splashed water on the back of her neck and wrists and sat beneath a flowering pear tree, breathing through her nose until the dizziness eased. The white blossoms looked ghostly in the gloaming.  
An hour slipped away, two, more. She nodded and dreamed and jerked awake at a sudden cry, tense and wondering, after a silence, if it had been she who had made the cry.

The edges of the high mountains were bloodied with a red and distant light that might have been dawn. Already she could see the shapes of the wains. Her eyes searched out every visible face, methodically. Standing, she drew up her sleeves and tightened the knot in her hair.


	6. In Love as in War

War, he thought, was not unlike a courtship. First, the flash of recognition, of decision, of blood thrumming in fingertips and buzzing in the ears. How no earthly beauty could rival the sight before your eyes, be it maiden or glittering cuirass and brilliant pennant; golden mane and cervine features or brave men and songs of bravado; the strength that comes with pursuing a worthy purpose.

After: the long lull, the inevitable parting, the wait. The agony of marching through weary and endless days where the very measure of the hours revolved around what and where and with whom you were not.

Then, on the heels of thunder, arose the close and desperate clash, the rise of blood and heat and doubt and glory all distilled to the edge of your sword, the focus of your eye, the nearness of the one with whom you struggled. This final, crushing culmination, the one where every muscle in your body seized, desire barely usurping pain and utter exhaustion, and the thought flittering through your mind, light as gossamer and weighted as the dead, that this is how you would die.

He would tell her that when it was over, he decided. She would laugh.


	7. Medals

He flung the trunk open against his footboard with a satisfying crack, a few moments' rooting unearthing the coffer. Only the Noldor would beat steel into the shapes of leaves and shields and daggers when the objects themselves would have served better. Instead, steel and copper and gold went to waste on cloak adornments and tunics worn only for special occasions. All the use of a peacock's tail.

These 'special occasions'-usually of a stately nature-served as little more than excuses for said peacocks to flash and glitter at one another, congratulating themselves on yet another campaign. Never mind that the only reason half of them bore those honors was the other half were in the ground, beneath the ash and mud and marsh of the Dagorlad.

Those ones had not worn silk or damask or cloth-of-gold. Only wool and leather…maybe a bit of plate, if they were fortunate, if the Noldor had not already melted it in anticipation of peacetime and the need to flaunt their pride before all and sundry.

He sounded bitter and, perhaps, he was unjust in being so.

But he did not think he was wrong.

It was leather and wool that kept a body together. Courage wore dust on its face and dark rings beneath its eyes. It carried any tool that would hold an edge after losing that precious dagger in the retreat from the quagmire. Fortitude dressed itself in a blood-stained uniform and sat, saturated, not-sleeping, through the watch-hours. Honor and Glory belonged to those who were wrapped in their wool when the fighting was over.

But the dead had no use for shapes of leaves and flowers and stars, for ribbons and medals. No more than he. One by one he dropped the medals about his neck where they rested, cold and heavy, against his naked chest.

He slipped on his boots (warm, supple leather) and, as an afterthought, took up his cloak of wool, draping it about his shoulders. Not that it would conceal anything that mattered.

Heads turned as he strode back up the parade ground where the bonfires were lit.

He presented himself before his officer and stood sharply to attention, shoulders in line with hips in line with boots, hands angled at his flanks. He had given satisfaction. He was wearing his medals. No one could say he wasn't. His medals and his boots and the things they couldn't see.

The colonel, who had ordered his compliance, looked him up and down, a flush of embarrassment and fury creeping up his neck. Slowly, as if a quagmire dragged at his limbs, he raised his silk-draped arm, saluting Haldir in all his glory.


	8. Songs and Sunlight

The light on her hair made him try when she asked.

The calluses were on the wrong parts of his fingers, and the first few notes when he set them to the strings pushed into the air like marsh birds, all lanky and awkward. She did not seem to notice. Slowly, slowly, as the sweat beaded under the soft linen he was still not accustomed to wearing, his fingers and wrists remembered their placement, his chest echoed the rise and fall of the harp's notes, and he slipped away from his self-consciousness, his self, into the melody and the golden light of afternoon in her hair.

The air around them swirled with a strange kind of power, the kind of power a battle drum wields, that sets a fire in men's hearts, bids them march and break themselves upon the enemy. It was the kind of power that could destroy him, he knew, those parts of him that he had gathered carefully together, piece by piece, on the march home where there had been no more music, no more singing. He would have sung now, if she had asked him. But she only smiled, knowingly. Her hair shone, broader, deeper gold, as if it had caught the music as well as the sunlight.

Something beat over him, like the strokes of great wings. The harp notes faltered, and his fingers fell away. If she noticed, she made no mention of it. She came to him and took up his hand, not minding the calluses, and thanked him for the song.


	9. Part Two: The Assignation, Lost in Tales

The library of Imladris housed one of the most extensive collections of artifacts and manuscripts that could be boasted of on this side of the Sea. Even Lindon was not so fortunate though it was, by far, the larger of the two.

But she did not love it for the account records it kept or the memories it held. She had enough of those. No. She came for the comfort within its walls, the undisturbed in the very breath of its dust. She came for the small nook in the bay windows where she might peer through coloured panes, the shapes of deer and dogs and men and imagine herself in another country, another time, another moment.

Free, for once, of her burdens, she might sit for hours, despite the cold and stiffness that invaded her legs, the sluggishness that eventually overtook her mind, the book she had taken from the shelves lying on her lap, open to a few leaves whose content she could no longer recall and did not need to.


	10. Unfurlings

At last, the air wrapped her in an embrace like a cloak instead of the wool to which she had become accustomed during this valley winter. She walked in the garden and stretched her shoulders, delighting in the play of under-used joints and tendons, the warmth on her arms and hair after days where the closest she came to warmth was tucked up as near the fire as she could without sitting in it or tucked up in bed, curled so tight on her side that she woke with aching knees and a stiff back.

There was looseness in her muscles now and a delightful anticipation. With the warming weather would come messengers, visitors, life and movement the way the Bruinen danced despite the crust of ice still clinging to its banks.

The trees were in bloom, and she carefully picked the tiny, white blossoms from her hair before she stepped back inside, slipping them into her pocket like a secret.


	11. Briar and Roses

"I'll not leave thee thou lone one

To pine on the stem.

Since the lovely are sleeping

Go sleep thou wit' them…"

The Silvan soldier has come to her thrice now, bidding her play The Last Rose of Summer though such a merry night does not merit such melancholy. Yet the brass thand beneath his shirt and the shadows in his eyes commands her obedience as the beat of the martial drum commanded his.

She plays, and he watches her, cradling his brandy and closing his eyes as if the song at once reminds him of sweetest joy and sharpest pain.

As the last chords ring, she is sweating and cold though she does not know why. She does not know if her playing comforts him. She hopes it does but also feels a flutter of guilty relief when the Lady Celebrían goes to him, murmurs something in his ear and eases him from the song and his memories into the quietude of the garden, letting the freed harp leap into "Dawning."


	12. Storm Breaking

Bits of leaves and twigs clung in her locks. That fair, golden envy of many a playmate now draggled down her neck and across her shoulders. Her calves were mud. Her gown clung unspeakably and bunched about her shoulders and belly, the hem dripping onto the flagstone floor. Her eyes looked too big and grey in her face, washed out by the weak light that remained to them. She peered at him too curiously, the way she read a text in a language wherein she had to puzzle out the gerunds and idioms strange to her, her lips pursed, her jaw stern but softened with droplets.

She was the most glorious creature he had ever seen.


	13. Behind Closed Doors

"Sweep first your own threshold," says Nana to me, her nimble fingers busy with the embroidery on a lady's slip.

Even though it is not suitable.

Everyone knows. Except perhaps that stuffy head groomsman. He cares little for anything outside his carriages and horses. All the household servants know.

The corridors belong to us, after all.

Particularly those places behind the stairs and within the linen closets, away from the hustle-bustle of the house, where no one knows you're there if you're sensible about it. Nana says they were built to make the work easier for us and unobtrusive for our guests. After all, who wishes to return from a stroll in the garden only to be met in the hall by some woman with an armful of dirty laundry or a nightsoil bucket in hand?

But the passages have been used for other purposes too.

It's shameful the way Mistress coyly tilts her head, invites her Companion with her glance. The way he answers with one of those smiles that only lift half a corner of the lips. A wolfish look, that. I would never wish for something so sordid directed at me.

But I am not Mistress.

The laundress chides me while we make the beds and bundle up the unwashed sheets. Why do I watch so attentively? What is it to me if Mistress dallies with her Swain? The laundress approves of words like "swain" and "dalliance." It sounds romantic to her.

True, I say. It is nothing at all to do with me.

And yet…

I look still out the corners of my eyes. I am sensible, me.

I notice that Mistress hums softly to herself after the courier comes bearing news from far away, a letter undoubtedly tucked beneath more formal papers in her trunk. On the nights that her Paramour is in the house, she retires early. The candles gleam on her skin and hair. The fragrance of rose water fills the chamber. She flits about with the nervous excitement of a girl and sends us off before the last of our chores are finished.

The passages tucked behind the stairs are familiar to my feet even in the dark, and I can walk them without tripping or disturbing the household. It is not strange to be kept company by sounds and movements of guests behind the thin walls.

Sometimes, I hear things I ought not to hear. Secret sounds not meant for my ears.

Sometimes, only sometimes, I stand on the threshold of my own little room at the top of the house and look about. It is small, neatly swept, perfectly ordered even though I must share it with that dreadful laundress. Every corner of the bedsheet is tucked in and smoothed. The candle in my hand glares off the hard, bare surfaces of table and knitting stool and the trunk at the foot of the bed. The sheets are cold and stiff as I slip into them.

My life is suitable.


	14. Heartland

The low-slung barracks tug him with their familiarity, but she has insisted upon a room in the house proper, and he's so tired from the journey and the change, he can only nod.

The chamber at the end of the east wing is larger than his talan: all high ceiling and dark beams. Half a dozen could dwell here with ease, but he thanks her anyway. Avoiding the marble monstrosity in the garderobe with its pipes that hum and chortle to themselves, he tends his ablutions with basin and cloth and feels clean enough. The bed of eiderdown suffocates him though until, in desperation, he takes a blanket and pillow to the floor.

The servants cast glances at him askance when they think he's not looking. He cares not. Two-hundred years on the line, and he never let one of the camp aides do for him what he could do for himself. And he'd be damned if he started getting complacent about it now. 'That is not how it is done,' one of the maids, a thin slip of a girl, tells him once. 'It is not suitable, sir.' But after the third day, they leave him in peace. He has a feeling she has slipped them an extra penny or two in reparation.

He brings his own knife to meals until a neighbor nudges him and points out half a dozen utensils alongside the plates. To his relief, if meals are formal, they are not obligatory, and he often slips into the kitchens to avail himself of the matron's favor, her excellent stews and a snifter of brandy.

He falls in readily enough with the men of the barracks. There is a familiar world. Drinks and dice and songs and stories. He can offer something there without having to contort himself into this world with its too-bright colors and overlarge rooms, nosy servants and ridiculous dinners.

Sometimes, he thinks of Lórien, as he never thought of it when he fit within its confines. In Imladris he is the stranger-even in the barracks. Even when time passes, and he knows the rules, and he doesn't bring his knife to the table anymore, and if the servants run a brush over his boots every now and again, he feigns not to notice. He worries he is growing complacent and still sleeps on the floor to make up for it.

If she laughs at his ways, she has the grace not to do so in front of him. Or maybe it is his strangeness that draws her in the first place. He is not part of this world that is hers, and she doesn't expect him to be. She sits on the floor amidst his made-up sheets with her knees tucked up and lays her cool hand against his chest where his pulse knocks. He puts his mouth under her jaw to taste the warm beat against his lips. At least there, there is no difference between them.

There is home.


	15. Tantivy

Her little hunters have him at bay, but the stag is tall and strong and will not relent so easily. Back and back, he is driven up against the bole of a tree. With a roar, Elladan drops his practice blade and charges at his prey's knees, single-mindedly determined to have his prize. Elrohir can only follow suit, and they bodily drag their panting, blowing quarry to the ground.

Flushed with triumph, Elladan plants a boot on his fallen prey's breast and thrusts his arms up, bellowing his victory until a yank on his ankle from the not-quite-vanquished sends him sprawling.

She whistles sharp and shrill to make her presence known, and her sons fly to her with barking laughter and rushed embraces before she sends them off to the stream to bathe the dust from their faces and arms before the evening meal.

Freed from his pursuers, the stag struggles to his feet, streaked with sweat and sand kicked up from the ring. She eases herself slowly into his presence, her steps noiseless on the grassy sward, but he looks up, a line of new alertness in his body, nostrils slightly flared. She can see the pulse thrumming beneath his jaw, almost smell the musk of his sweat, his exhaustion. But the stag is not run ragged yet.

He offers her the blade hilt-first. The curl of his lip and the ruck of an eyebrow is the signal that releases the running-hounds. She plucks the blunted tourney blade from his grasp and plunges it deep into the soil. Her smile is sharp as an arrow.

"Nay, my stag. I wish to see you felled another way."

The shaft strikes home. His eyes half-close, the tension going out of his shoulders and back muscles, as he bows his proud head before her.


	16. The Unmaking

The dried sweat of the training ring still clings to his skin, making the sloughing off of his tunic clumsy and embarrassing in a vague sort of way. He does not like the smell of his own sweat; it is too bold, too strong, too…vulgar. He starts to offer a protest, a plea for a moment's wash, but she will not hear of it. The wooden bedframe is only slightly softened with a mattress of eiderdown: it is too often cold for him to consider it more than an object aptly-suited for its purpose.

Their lovemaking is not gentle. They are expected for supper, and even for they, who have already seen an Age pass, time is measured. A snatching of a season here, a stolen moment in the dark, a cautious caress with none but the trees to bear witness. It has been too long since they could touch one another thus with such freedom, and his fingertips swallow her skin greedily. He drinks of her kisses, thinking of the strange, humped animals of the Southern deserts and wishing like them he could hold such nourishment within him through the long drought.

Her enchanting hands are quick to kindle him, and the taut friction of her covered thighs torment him with all she withholds. His release when wrought—at last and too soon—pulses between them, warm and violent as a mortal wound, a dying cry wrenched from his lips.

They are late now. But the disheveled bed has absorbed the languid heat of their bodies, and he cannot summon the wherewithal to shift her comfortable weight from him. For once, she seems content to let him do so. Not often does she allow him to hold her thus, in stillness and quiet. Afraid to move, breathing in her hair, entangled in her limbs, he watches the shadows lengthen against the pale walls of his talan. And he knows himself irrevocably lost.


	17. By the Moonlight

"Tilion steers on strange paths tonight," she murmured. "I have never felt such light on my skin, as thick as water, and so bright, it's better than a lantern."

Shadows of leaves danced over his face like lace. She traced their movements with the tips of her fingers.

"Of what are you thinking?"

"That Tilion may light his chariot well tonight, but even so, it does not reach all things. 'Tis an abyss beneath us."

She drew her hand away, turning restlessly in the circle of his arms. "Only you would see something grim and fanciful in a few close-growing mellyrn."

"I did not say there was aught grim in it. It makes me feel…suspended, somehow, lighter, to know that there is a plunge."

"I still say you are fanciful."

He laughed against her shoulder. "Then teach me to be practical, as you are."


	18. Absence

It is one of the nights she cannot get away, and he tells himself he does not feel the lack. Their realization is too new, if long-nurtured, too fragile to miss. To long for.

And yet…

He prowls his talan, too restless to read, too tormented by thought to give the rosters on his desk the attention they deserve. He feels he is without purpose, going from the kitchen to his study to the front balcony as if he were a lovelorn boy, mooning over the first maiden who ever looked long enough on him for hope.

He keeps remembering how she put her hand in his and looked into his face, her eyes hard and glittering.

Are you afraid? 

Terrified. There is time still, for you, if… 

I have decided. It is done. 

And yet…

He feels her misgiving like a brand against his skin. Why else does she not come to him? Why then does he wait for her long past the hour he would normally have sought his bed? What has she done to him that he has flung all his hard-won self-sufficiency at her feet? She has unraveled him.

He goes to the sideboard and pours himself a sliver of amber liquid, but the brandy sours on his tongue even before he forces himself to settle into a chair. It will be a long night.


	19. Old Habits

They are quarreling. Again.

The room is dim and yet somehow over-bright, too richly furnished for his tastes. He sleeps most nights on the floor in a pile of pillows and blankets. When she learned of it, she laughed and told him the servants were being driven to distraction.

Now she is the one so driven.

He wishes he had not drunk quite so much after the evening meal. His head is spinning, his limbs attached to the rest of him by a thread only. He does not know why she is angry with him.

Again.

He has done something. Or he has not done something. That was usually the way of it, coupled with her suspicions that he had others, his old desire to be left alone, her concern at the increasing distance between them, his disbelief that she loved him. Their mutual fear of discovery. The frustrating and clandestine nature of their love. Its unshakeable immutability.

Her voice is breaking, hoarse and worn-out, but too proud to cry just yet. Close. And he knows he has lost. Again.

Rising, he goes to her and catches the edges of her tears with his thumbs.

"Nothing ever changes you."

"No," he says and kisses her.


	20. Part Three: Leavetakings, Iris

She lay upon her side, curled up like a child after a bad dream, almost luminous against the stony ground beneath her. Two of her fingernails were missing. Only hanks lying at her nape remained of her beautiful hair. She wore nothing but the colors of blood and bruise.

He too was the color of blood and bruise with shades mixed in of outrage and hurt and why? Why her? Had he done this to her? Had he caused this, unknowing? Had he cursed her to fall into these creatures' hands? Guilt wrapped about his shoulders and lapped darkly at his heels, lingering amongst the bodies he had cut down to get to her. Even then, he wanted to love her, to take her into him.

Too late, he lifted her into his arms, her forehead against his neck, and carried her into the sunlight.


	21. Echoes

She is full of hollow places. Dripping caves and winding tunnels that open into darkness. Something is waiting for her down the ends of some of those corridors, but she is too afraid to look, afraid of what might be there other than the darkness. Her voice does not echo despite the space about her.

They do not see the holes in her, the vast emptinesses. But they have a way of looking through her nonetheless, talking as if she cannot hear, murmuring hard things in soft voices that reverberate in her head.

Mad.

Whore. Or hor—?

Poor thing.

Poor thing.

Sometimes she wakes in the darkness to the touch of fingers in her hair, and she knows them, is comforted by them, before she screams herself awake, floundering amid grey, wet sheets that rise and fall like swells around her, wide and fathomless, crashing against the hollow places, filling them. Filling them.


	22. Hollow

He is not alone tonight. He seldom is these days. The sheets have cooled and lap from his legs as he pads to the window. A tin mug of wine lays there, the dregs stale and metallic-tasting as he swallows them down.

The woman in his bed will not be there for long, no longer than any of the others, at least. She may not come back though the light in her eyes tells him more than her vocal bedplay that she would have more of him if he were willing to give it.

He has heard the whispers and covert exchanges of coin between his men, caught his brothers' sidelong glances, mingled disapproval and concern. He cares not for either. He does not have the bereaved's right to mourn. He is merely doing what is expected of him. What was expected of him even before they brought her home, out of the clutches of the mountains.

He is without Celebrían, and there is no part of him that does not want to break down the leagues and walls and water between them in order to gather her in his arms again. But she is gone.


	23. Unfaithful

She was too thin, they said. Gaunt, almost. Her natural slenderness pared to an unnatural leanness. She did not much care. She preferred it so. Her face in the mirror looked hard, strong, its bones and tendons visible, the arches of her collar and cheekbones, battlements and ramparts raised.

Against what, she could not rightly say.

She hardly thought of her lover anymore even when she heard his name. The woman he had secluded under his trees had been softer than she now. A weak-willed, arrogant woman who had assumed the world would be hers if she wished it so. It was not so.

If she thought of him at all, it was about the safe things. Not the dream things, not the warm-and-heavy kind of things.

His eyes. Marksman's eyes, someone had told her once, not meaning to hurt.

The way he held harp strings on the edges of his fingers. As if they were strands of hair. Sometimes, they were.

His mouth was too thin and ironic to be considered perfectly handsome. Vaguely roguish.

But that was a dangerous thought.

It had been a long day, the sun beating too hard and brilliant against the windows.

She drew the curtains and stretched herself on the bed, propped up a little because she did not wish to fall asleep. Her pulse beat in her left shoulderblade, just under the bone, hard and slightly fast though nothing had startled her.

Or was it anticipation she felt?

Her own feelings were difficult to guess these days, though she could read others' easily enough in the sidelong looks, the slight tension in the hands of the servants when they handed her anything. The questions, always the questions.

If she wanted for anything…

There was no rosewater on her thigh. No white ribbons in her hair. She smelled of sleep, not ready.

Without wanting to, without meaning to, she slipped over the edge into dark, into dreams, her fingers curled upward on the coverlet, her head leaned back uncomfortably against the headboard.

She slept.


	24. The Elysian Fields

Rows upon rows of swaying blooms glimmered pale against the dark weft of the gloaming-shadows. Haldir stepped into the meadow as if entering a chamber where another sleeps. Each pace threatened to buckle him at the knees, and he worried he would not have the wherewithal to endure the walk homeward after he had discharged this final duty. Even he, who felt little compunction to abide by the strictures of martial panoply, felt more than a little unkempt with his collar askew and ash-stained, his hair tangled and smoky about his shoulders, his fingers bloodied and sore from hauling endless faggots of wood. Lórien's fallen were not laid to rest beneath the earth.

He was beginning to regret telling Rúmil and Orophin that he would come in his own time in his own fashion. After paying their respects, they had all dispersed with friends, lovers, wives or children: his brothers, their comrades and the men of the northern fences to whom he had given leave (and some to whom he had not), taking the comfort and solace that so many needed and so few received. It was bad form for a captain to lead from the rear—it suggested fear, and he did not fear this meadow. For what was there to fear? Emptiness? An unarmed company of flowers without even thorns to shield them from a stranger's idle, plucking hand?

Who could know that something so pale had sprung from battleplains so red? That their fragrance did not entirely dispel the stench of the marshes from his nostrils, and even then, still there lingered the smoke ever-rising from across the Anduin. Who could know that for every blossom, there was a face or, sometimes, a name he knew or had once known? Too many.

The dryness on his tongue recalled the wineskin in his hand. His former comrades did not protest that he had drunk his half before them but downed their share in the time-honored fashion of soldiers exhilarating in their first swallow of wine after crossing a desert. Mirkwood's rich vintage washed the earth and the heads of the alfirin with drops of darkest crimson.

Haldir eased himself roughly to his knees and reached for the leathern pouch at his belt. Its too-familiar weight chafed and unbalanced him even as it grew lighter. The earth was stiff and unyielding, and his nails and fingers were scored and blackened to the knuckles by the time he carved the niches. The seeds were hardy and once in bloom would not fade even outside the more indolent climes of Caras Galadhon. He covered them over quickly as if the smoothness of the ground where they lay might bring with it a concomitant lightening of responsibility from his overburdened shoulders and blunt the knife-edge of grief and guilt.

It didn't.

"Three more to lay their arms beside yours, lads." He glanced at the blood on one of his knuckles, bright in the gathering twilight. "Your duty is done."


	25. Afterword and Annotations

Author's Afterword

I have this terrible, perfectionist's tendency, when finishing a story, to look back at its roots, to see how it grew in the telling, and if what grew there was what I had planted in the first place or if it sprouted peculiar little offshoots and branches and strange flowers I never could have imagined.

Lord of the Rings has snared my attention for more than ten years, ever since I read the Hobbit in seventh grade (I had no patience for the snail's pace of my classmates' reading aloud and devoured the book). Then came Fellowship of the Ring, and Two Towers and Return of the King followed by anything and everything else I could get my hands on. What seized me and held me—continues to hold me—is the undiscovered country behind the words, the little offshoots, the glimpses of characters and incidents and events, never given full flesh.

Celebrían's story was one of those.

Shrouded in mystery, she is mentioned only parenthetically—and unnamed until the Fellowship's leaving Lothlórien—in LOTR itself with an addendum in the Appendices recording the years of her capture, torment, and eventual departure. Which leaves a frustrated and eager reader wondering: What happened before?

Fanfiction writers have addressed this question in their own unique ways, but as I write this, out of nearly 50,000 stories in the Lord of the Rings category, a mere 70 list Celebrían as a main character. And many trend towards Redhorn-aftermath fics or contemplative oneshots in the viewpoint of a left-behind family member. Rare are the ones that deal in her history beforehand—SerenLyall's lyrical pieces spring to mind. They were not enough.

As is my habit when left unsatisfactorily answered, I began to wonder about Celebrían's history, the inconsistent and half-guessed snippets in Unfinished Tales, the vague allusions in the Tale of Years drafts. But not until I was writing backstory for my current multi-chapter story, Invictus, did I really delve into the possibilities of her character. Invictus deals with, among many other things, Elrohir's attempt to come to terms with his mother's loss and the circumstances behind it.

The loss of a parent changes the course of one's life the way the collapse of a bulwark alters the flow of a river, and many are the fics covering Elrohir's and Elladan's reactions to their mother's torment and "death" ("passing over the Sea" always seems to have that melancholic note). But I have yet to see a story that explores her departure in more than its serviceable capacity as a plot device.

Tolkien records that after the Redhorn, Celebrían was healed of her physical wounds but "lost joy" in Middle-earth. A statement open to myriad interpretations, but I took it as a suggestion of not only lost joy but lost hope in the belief that things could get better. Assuming Orcs' ill nature provoked them to the most heinous actions, this depression can easily be understood even though I find myself dissatisfied with that idea. Indeed, disturbed. I am a great believer in hope, no matter the circumstances, especially with a solid support system of friends and family—though the healing itself may be long. And though past mortal cultures (and, regrettably, some present day ones) had a tendency to "blame the victim," I would like to believe the Eldar more progressive than that.

To leave behind a family, a safe realm as Imladris was, and support for the sake of a long and perilous journey first to the Havens, then a sea passage to an unknown country, where the surety of healing is, at best, uncertain suggests a desire to escape, or a more traumatic, internal hurt that the Orc attack exacerbated and against which the support of family and friends was either useless or even more hurtful. Perhaps Celebrían even blamed herself for her victimization. Or felt that she deserved it.

Of course, putting "why" to that eventually resulted in the idea of an affair. While this may prove a point of contention for readers, the Silmarillion as well as the much-cited, oft misquoted, and unreliably narrated Laws and Customs of the Eldar provide ample evidence evincing Elves' capability of folly, pride, anger, lust and everything in between. Even if word of their deeds never touches mortal ears.

Haldir, for me, was the natural choice as her paramour, only partly arbitrarily, considering there is almost as much (little, rather) known of him as there is of Celebrían, and he is a character who has long held my interest. Part of the challenge I enjoyed in the course of this story was how to make their relationship plausible while maintaining Elrond's integrity since I do believe Celebrían loved him in her own way. But I'll leave it to readers to tell me whether I provided that verisimilitude or not. As an admitted lover of such extraordinary romances as Wuthering Heights, Possession, the English Patient, I loved the idea of two people very different in matters of taste, experience, nature, and sensibility finding in each other something to appreciate, something to love and risk for.

The reason, perhaps, for why I have thus far been spared the vented spleen of outraged canonists is we know it's doomed from the outset. There can be no happy ending for these two. And there is something perversely attractive about a love that is doomed before it even begins (doubly so, if adulterous).

Of course, as in all tales, these drabbles have gaps and missing pieces, lost moments and unanswered questions as well as a thoroughly butchered chronology…I did this mostly to avoid inconsistency with any current or future stories. As my version of canon constantly grows, often wildly, I do not wish to try readers' patience overmuch with constant changes and revisions.

As it stands I have rambled for too long, and possibly to no consequence, since I'm not sure this interests anyone but myself. On the off-chance it does, I will post it. For now, the drabbles will stand as they are, all complete in their own right even if they offer only glimpses of a much broader picture.

Thank you to all reviewers and readers, if any. I am grateful to you all. For even if Tolkien plants the seeds, your responses and questions often are the ones that let my strange sproutlings take root and become things I never would have imagined.

All the best,

Marchwriter 

30 Jan. 2013

 

The Ides' Annotations 

Part One: First Sights 

Silver Queen

"Silver Queen" is one of the possible translations of Celebrían's name.

Equals

One of the few outside perspectives in these drabbles and the only time I address Elrond's. As kind as summer as he is in LOTR and all that, Elrond must have learned somewhere along the way.

From the East

We never hear about female Elves and their role in the Last Alliance even though Tolkien admits in Laws and Customs of the Eldar that elven men and women were more or less equal if more aptly suited towards others; If the women were young and not with child, I do not think they would be content to remain behind but would serve in some capacity with their men, especially through seven long years of war.

Medals

A wink and a nudge to a Band of Brothers moment.

Songs and Sunlight

Fellowship hints at Haldir's well-hidden musical talents with his comment of "our hands are more often upon the bowstring than upon the harp."

Part Two: The Assignation

Briar and Roses

"Briar" of course is an alternative spelling of brier but also incidentally Haldir's half-affectionate, half-exasperated sobriquet for Celebrían

"The Last Rose of Summer" was originally a poem written by Thomas Moore (not that one) and set to music by Sir John Stevenson. Though written in the 1800s, it has that flavor of old Celtic ballads and evokes such an inspiring eeriness that I hope readers will forgive the anachronism

thand- Sindarin for "shield." Something like modern dog tags that typically are brass in the Last Alliance, iron afterwards and were engraved with soldiers' names and companies and later the campaigns in which they served

Behind Closed Doors

Servants have stereotypically been the bearers of gossip or in medieval tales the helpers of illicit lovers (like Tristan and Iseult). I tried to invert this in that this particular servant is neither a gossip nor a helper. Indeed, she envies the lovers their spark of happiness not a little even though it's "not suitable."

Heartland

Having experienced a bit of displacement myself in another country, I wanted to capture Haldir's feelings as a newcomer to Imladris.

Tantivy

"Tantivy" in hunting terminology is the "full gallop" or rush, sometimes employed as a hunting cry when the chase is full on

Though not depicted in this particular set of drabbles, chapters in Invictus inform us that Haldir spent time as fosterer to Elladan and Elrohir, preparing them for knighthood.

Running-hounds were like to a foxhound with good noses and excellent stamina

The Unmaking

In medieval hunting, hunting par force was the noblest kind with eight designated parts, one of the last being the unmaking where the quarry, captured and killed, was carefully and ritualistically dismembered

By the Moonlight

Tilion is the steersman of the Moon

Part Three: Leavetakings 

Iris

In martial circles, the iris was said to represent martial valor and prowess.

Unfaithful

Shortly before Celebrían's departure, this drabble reflects on the one hand her desire to forget Haldir whose absence in her life has hurt her and still her inability to put him behind her.

The Elysian Fields

In Classical mythology, the Elysian fields are the abode of the blessed after death. Where Haldir is, decidedly, not. This is supposed to take place sometime during the War of the Ring, or so I imagined, and the openings of the battle of Dol Guldur in March.


End file.
